How are you?"
His father looked at him from beneath his cap, gave a feeble smile,
then said after a pause: "Eh?"
Vasena answered for him: "You may well ask how he is doing, Ilya
Ippolytovich! Why, we are fearing the worst every day."
Ilya threw her a reproachful glance and said loudly: "It is nonsense,
father! You have still a hundred years to live! You are tired, let us
sit down here and have a talk together."
They sat down on the marble steps of the terrace. Silence. No words
came to Ilya. Try as he might, he could not think what to say.
"Well, I am still painting pictures," he tried at last; "I am
preparing to go abroad."
The old man did not hear him; he looked at his son without seeing or
understanding, plunged in his own reflections.
"You have come to look at me? You think I shall die soon?" he asked
suddenly.
Ilya Ippolytovich grew very pale and muttered confusedly: "What are
you saying, father? What do you mean?"
But his father no longer heard. He had fallen back in his chair, his
eyes half-closed and glassy, his face utterly expressionless. He was
asleep.
VI
The sun was shining, the sky was blue; in the limpid spaces above the
earth there was a flood of crystal light.
Ilya Ippolytovich strolled through the park and thought of his
father. The old man had lived a full, rich, and magnificent life.
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